Student Financial Aid News

From Inside Higher Ed:

California’s community colleges could soften the projected blow to their budget by tripling tuition with no net impact on most students, says a new report by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. In-state residents currently pay $20 per course credit, making California the cheapest state in the nation in which to attend community college. A typical class is three or four credits, totaling $60 to $80. According to the report, state and federal financial aid would offset tuition increases of up to $60 per credit. Should community colleges charge $60 per course credit, they would generate an additional estimated $500 million, according to the report.

Commentary

The comment that tripling tuition should have no net impact on most students is laughable.

What the state of California is effectively proposing is using up scarce federal financial aid dollars to plug holes in their deficit, funneling money through the community college system. For those students who qualify for aid, California is effectively asking them to route money from the federal government to California’s bare cupboards, while those students who don’t qualify for aid will have to pay triple the cost out of pocket.

Further, it’s not delineated what kind of aid students would need to make up the tripled tuition. Federal financial aid, as many students know, includes federal student loans like the Stafford loan and the PLUS loan. If California’s asking its poorest students to borrow money against their own futures to help close a deficit that today’s state leaders have created through fiscal irresponsibility, then not only should all American taxpayers be incensed, but California residents doubly so. No generation of students should have to borrow against their own future to pay for their elder generation’s recklessness.

From the Chronicle:

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to hear arguments in a case that hinges on whether students can avoid repaying their federally backed student loans without showing that making the payments would cause them financial distress or “undue hardship.” “The provision giving student-loan creditors a right to special procedures comes into play when the case is pending before the bankruptcy court,” wrote a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit court. “If a debtor proposes to discharge a student-loan debt without invoking the special procedures applicable to such debts, the creditor can object to the plan until the debtor shows undue hardship in an adversary proceeding.”

Commentary

I’m hopeful that the Supreme Court rules in favor of the student. Student loans, whether federal or private student loans, should not be exempt from the consumer protections afforded to every other form of lending. Standardize consumer protections across all forms of lending so that both borrowers and lenders can appropriately and uniformly judge risk accurately.

Scholarship Update

Home Depot Trade Scholarship program. We recognize the hard work that it takes to complete this education, and we want to provide scholarship assistance to defray some of the cost. That’s why The Home Depot has established a new scholarship program for students enrolled in building and construction trade programs. The Home Depot Trade Scholarship Program will recognize more than 600 students nationwide that are on track to graduate within the next 12 months with a $500 scholarship to help offset the cost of their qualifying tuition and related expenses.

Details at our free college scholarship search site.

5 most recent Financial Aid News articles:

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
Powered by FeedBurner